June’s Me-Made Dress
The start of another month means it is time for my next ‘me-made’ dress!!! Life and work kinda got a bit hectic the last few months, so I have been playing catch up with my 12 month dress project, which means I actually sewed 3 dresses in 3 days. But here is my June dress! It is super flowy, light, with those gorgeous full sleeves and I think the blue floral fabric is perfect for winter! I had been eyeing off this fabric in Spotlight for a while now but initially didn’t jump on it as blue isn’t one of my normal wardrobe colours, but I figured I was still so tempted by it after a few visits that I wouldn’t regret buying it. And as bonus it was on sale… I only ended up grabbing 3m of it and kinda wish I had an extra metre to play with as it was a lot of work to be able to cut all of the pieces out with what I had. Thankfully it just managed to fit and the little bits I had left over was perfect for the button down front.
For this dress I wanted to master putting together a button down style dress – which to this point I had been actively trying to avoid (along with anything including zips) as I wasn’t feeling super confident about putting it together without following a detailed pattern. But I think it came together really nicely with with coconut shell buttons from Kylie and the Machine. The pattern was self-drafted off an old dress I had in my wardrobe which had stains on it and was also way too short for me to wear as a dress. But I loved the loose fit and feminine flow of it, so I cut up the old dress to create, modify and adapt as the pattern pieces for this version (see below for a rough sketch of the pattern). I added in an extra section at the waist to give it a bit more length and adapted the front for the buttons which the original dress didn’t have. Of course, I had the plans of adding in pockets but I kinda stuffed up and added them in on the bottom tier not the top and so I had to cull them completely (sad face). Meaning this is the first dress out of the 6 so far for this year that doesn’t have pockets.
The rayon fabric was a lot more drapey (is that a word?) than the light weight cotton the original dress was made out of so it didn’t hold it’s shape as much. Which is partly perfect for these loose flow style dress, but also meant that I needed to adjust the waist band (narrower at the front and wider at the back) to help the hem line to be slightly more even. To begin with it was longer at the side seams which just looked a bit odd. Lots of pinning and unpicking different sections to get it to sit right for me. I think next time I make this style of dress I will try a V-neck button up bodice for some variety.
- Pattern – self-drafted off an old Big W dress from 2019
- Blue Floral Rayon Fabric (3 metres) – Spotlight (not available online)
- 5mm elastic for the sleeve cuffs – East Coast Fabrics
- Coconut Shell Buttons – Kylie and the Machine
- Light Iron on Interfacing (for some support to the button hole section).
My other Me-made dresses
